During this Great Lent many of us Orthodox Christians throughout Connecticut have been visiting each others’ churches on Sunday evenings to celebrate lenten Vespers together. Every time we gather for this service, we chant a wonderful prayer to the Mother of God:

“Beneath your compassion, we take refuge, O Theotokos. Despise not our supplication in our adversities, but deliver us from perils and sorrow, O only-blessed one.”

Recently, I found an article that dates this prayer back to the middle of the third century! Isn’t it heartening to discover that early Christians honored the Mother of God and asked for her intercessory prayer, and that we Orthodox Christians in the 21st century continue this tradition?

I received permission to reprint the article and the prayer, from the blogger who posted it. I hope you enjoy its content (below), which includes as well information about the feast days dedicated to the Mother of God.

And, remember, we celebrate one of those feasts this week, March 24-25: the Annunciation, that is, the announcement by the Angel Gabriel that the Virgin Mary would give birth to the Christ Child, Jesus, the Savior of the World.

The earliest known prayer to the Theotokos (Greek, Θεοτοκος, meaning “Bearer of God”) is a prayer found on a fragment of papyrus dating back to approximately AD 250. In 1917, the John Rylands Library (1) in Manchester, England, acquired a large panel of Egyptian papyrus. The prayer is located on the fragment recorded as reference number Greek Papyrus 470. The prayer appears to be from a Coptic Christmas liturgy or vespers written in Koine Greek although the fragment in question may be a private copy of the prayer. The prayer is still chanted in the Orthodox Church to this day at the end of nearly every Vespers service during Lent. It is also found in the worship services of the Roman Catholic and Oriental Churches.

The early date of this prayer is important for a number of reasons, one of which is that it supports our understanding that the term Theotokos was not just a theological concept defended at the Third Ecumenical Council in AD 431, but was already in popular use and well-known several centuries before the Nestorian heresy. As St. Gregory of Nazianzus stated in AD 379, “If someone does not uphold that the holy Mary is Theotokos, he is separated from divinity.” (Letter 101, PG 37, 177C) Early Christians recognized the Theotokos as a powerful intercessor for those who are suffering and in need of protection. Christians have been seeking her intercessions from the time of the ancient Church and well over a thousand years up to this very day.

Beneath thy compassion, We take refuge, O Mother of God: do not despise our petitions in time of trouble, but rescue us from dangers, only pure one, only blessed one.

An excerpt from “The Significance of the Term Theotokos” from The Byzantine Fathers of the Fifth Century (Fr. Georges Florovsky) June, 1987.

“The term Theotokos — Θεοτοκος — does not mean the same as “Mother of God” in English or the common Latin translation. In English one must translate Theotokos as “Bearer of God.” The correct Latin would be deipara or dei genetrix, not Mater Dei. Had Nestorius been more prudent he would have realized that the term Theotokos had a comparatively long usage — it had been used by Origen, by Alexander of Alexandria, by Eusebius of Caesarea, Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Cyril. In the Latin West Tertullian had used the term Dei Mater in De patientia 3 and Ambrose also used it in his Hexaemeron V, 65 (Patrologia Latina. 14, 248A). More significant is that the Antiochene theologian Eustathius (bishop of Antioch from c.324 to 330), so often considered a forerunner of Nestorius, had some remarkably un-Antiochene tendencies in his Christology, one of which was the use of the term Theotokos.”

Sources:

1. Image Reproduced by courtesy of the University Librarian and Director, The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester. For more information on the fragment, visit: http://tinyurl.com/kh3fy5d

2. “The Significance of the Term Theotokos” from The Byzantine Fathers of the Fifth Century (Fr. Georges Florovsky) June, 1987.

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